


Wisdom

by Kuroeia (Empatheia)



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-28
Updated: 2007-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:50:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Kuroeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a year, with the falling leaves, he comes to drink her tea and look for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wisdom

At the very end, he told her that she had lived a wise life.

If not for the weight of decades on her shoulders she might have slapped him, but as it was she only laughed and told him that wisdom was not all it was painted to be.

"Another sort of wisdom," he said then, so she slapped him anyway.

**x**

Once a year, with the falling leaves, he came to visit her. He told her it was because she made decent tea and knew a lot for a human. It might have even been true.

Kaede did not really care why he came. She had known his brother, and had been the younger sister of the woman his brother had loved. If he asked about them, she answered and did not begrudge him the memories.

It was a fair exchange for his company, though he rarely said much.

In the first few years, when she was a raw-skinned sapling made of knees and elbows and painfully earnest eyes, he only sat and drank her tea and asked her questions.

In the last years, after her face and fingers and back grew soft and crooked, he sat and drank her tea, but instead of asking questions, he let her tell what stories she would. It was an odd form of respect.

The years in the middle... ah.

**x**

Her life was in its twilight now, and she could hear Death trudging behind and matching her footsteps. Even so, there was still memory.

He never changed, in the way that mountains never change, the way the ocean never changes: by changing constantly, but in such a way that any difference slips by easily on the backs of moments.

She looked at his lips and remembered how they'd felt pressed to her hand, her throat, her breasts. Because they looked just the same it was so easy to fall back through the years and decades between them and her.

She watched his hands as he drank her tea and remembered all the wandering paths they'd travelled over her skin in those middle years, remembered so hard it was almost like feeling. Her thighs hurt from it, but there was no longer any relief to be had.

The time for passion was past. But... oh, the memories. Her paper veins, her reed-brittle body could not contain this fire anymore, but it came nevertheless.

She had asked him why once.

"Because I want to understand," he'd answered, and though she hadn't understood right away, the moment she'd heard the story of Inuyasha's parents it had made perfect sense.

Even so, even so.

**x**

At the very end, he told her again that she had lived a wise life.

Then he kissed her, though her lips were sagging paper parodies of what they had been, and thanked her.

She really could not figure out what for, but she liked the thought of his voice being the last thing she heard before...

Then there were no more questions to answer, and no more touches to feel, or memories to treasure.

It was a welcome silence.

**X**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by: Resmiranda


End file.
